1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a water purification apparatus and method. In particular, the present invention relates to a water purification apparatus and method using a pressurized micro-filter preprocessed with a coagulation inclined-plate sedimentation reservoir and a pore-control fiber filter for improvement of a recovery rate, which can reduce the pollution load of the pressurized micro-filter through a preprocess by a flash mixer, a two-stage coagulation reservoir and an inclined-plate sedimentation reservoir and can improve the recovery rate by using the pore-control fiber filter to recover backwash wastewater discharged from the pressurized micro-filter.
2. Description of the Related Art
World-wide attention is being focused on water due to the lack of water caused by global warming, industrialization and population growth, the water infrastructure degeneration of advanced countries, and the deterioration of water quality caused by the advance of industrialization of developing countries. The world-wide water industry is expected to grow at an annual rate of 5% on average and reach a market size of 0.3 trillion dollars in 2010, and the structural change, the growth acceleration, the internationalization and the opening of the water industry are now in progress. The multinational water companies have made inroads into the water markets of developing countries including China. However, due to the high entry barriers in the service businesses and the water supply and drainage facilities, the domestic water companies have difficulty in entering the world-wide water market. Economical scale, high and specialized technology, efficient service, and total solution technology are required to compete with the water companies that preoccupies the existing water market.
The domestic water market encounters various problems such as the reinforcement of drinking water quality standards, the formation of new water paradigms, the limited process efficiency of conventional water treatment processes, the degeneration of facilities, and the need for specialized service management systems. What is therefore required is the next-generation environment-friendly water treatment technology that can graft newly developable future technology onto the conventional technology, an example of which is a membrane-based water purification system.
A membrane-based filtration technology can effectively remove target materials by the definite size of pore. Due to its excellent capability of removing pathogenic microorganisms, the membrane-based filtration technology can replace the conventional mixing, coagulation, sedimentation and sand filtration processes through only a single membrane-filtration process.
Also, the modularizing, skidding and packaging of membrane facilitates the installation, improvement and extension of facilities, thus making it possible to reduce the construction period and facilitate the combination with a single water treatment process. Also, it enables the automation of a membrane filtration system in the places lacking specialists, such as small-scale water purification plants and village waterworks, thus making it possible to attempt the integrated operation management.
In addition, the use of the membrane-based filtration technology enables minimization of an occupation area, reduction of a coagulant injection amount, reduction of a sludge generation amount, efficient use of energy, and high process speed, and thus it can be considered as the next-generation environment-friendly water treatment process.
However, technology is insufficient to effectively control a water purification process based on membrane-based filtration technology, due to the unfavourable conditions of inflow water such as the high turbidity level, the low water temperature and the large alga population number caused by the characteristics of water sources for domestic water purification plants.
Also, various process methods are being considered to improve a recovery rate for preservation of water resources, but there is a need for research on wastewater treatment technology suitable for the domestic situations.